A bipartisan cast of heavy hitters from the Senate Judiciary Committee is going after patent trolls with a new bill introduced on Wednesday, and this time they believe reform will pass.

"This is as close as you get to legislative shock and awe," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, as he took stock of his six cosponsors, sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Charles Schumer, D-New York, Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota.

The Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship Act—or Patent Act—is the latest Congressional attempt at patent reform. The reforms in the bill would require patent holders to make specific infringement claims if at all possible; impose legal fees on the party whose losing position is not "objectively reasonable"; and ban vague patent-infringement demand letters designed to intimidate a business into settling what could otherwise amount to a meritless lawsuit.

"I've been talking about the problem of patent trolls since 2005, when Sen. Leahy and I first began working on what is now the America Invents Act, so I'm glad that a decade later there's such strong bipartisan support for this bill," Hatch said.

"We've had more meetings with more stakeholders for this bill than for about anything I can remember, and I've been here for 40 years," Leahy said. "If we keep the balance we've struck on this, we should be able to report it out of the judiciary again with Republican and Democratic votes. I think if we do this, we can get it passed."

All seven co-sponsors spoke at Wednesday's press conference, and each of them emphasized their belief that the bill curbs abusive litigation while protecting patent holders' intellectual property rights.

"It's important to note that nothing that we do, nothing that we propose in this legislation, would diminish or impair the property rights of authors and inventors," Lee said. "No, quite to the contrary, this adds to those protections that currently are being eroded as a result of abusive litigation practices that are harming small business owners."

Klobuchar noted that Minnesota is the home to the patent holders of Post-It and pacemakers. "We have to respect those legitimate patent holders, we all have them in our state, and balance that with the fact that we have some really bad actors, these trolls that don't just occupy our Twitter feed, but are doing a lot really bad things to the American economy," she said.

"There will be people who don't see beyond their own little narrow interest who say 'no' " to the bill, Schumer said. "We know not everyone will love every part of this bill, that's the nature of the beast."

Schumer expressed confidence the President Barack Obama would sign the bill within six months.